


Under The Influence

by telperion_15



Category: Primeval
Genre: Community: primevalathon, Exploration, First Time, M/M, Sex Pollen, Stuck in the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 00:41:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telperion_15/pseuds/telperion_15
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trapped in the past, Nick and Stephen start behaving oddly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under The Influence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moonlettuce (Claire)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claire/gifts).



> Originally written for moonlettuce as part of the Primevalathon, for the prompt 'Prehistoric sex pollen'.

“ _Shit!_  Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit!”

“Well, I think that sums up the situation pretty well,” Stephen commented dryly.

Nick turned on him. “How can you not be more upset about this? The anomaly is gone, and we’re stuck in some prehistoric jungle with only two bottles of water and a few cereal bars between us.”

“Oh, come on. We’ve been watching this anomaly for a month. You _know_ it comes and goes – you can practically set your watch by it. It’ll be back in three days, and in the meantime we’ll just have to wait here, and try and avoid getting eaten. We’ll survive.”

Nick looked like he was trying to find an argument to counter Stephen’s common sense, but eventually he gave up, slumping ill-naturedly on to a rock. “I suppose you’re right,” he muttered grudgingly.

“Of course I’m right.” Stephen grinned. “Look at it this way – it’ll be a nice break. You’ve been working far too hard lately. We both have.”

Nick smiled back – Stephen’s grin was infectious. “That sounds nice,” he allowed. “Although it doesn’t change the fact that we have virtually no food and drink.”

“So we’ll come back a bit thinner.” Stephen shrugged. “It’s only three days. We might even be able to find some fruit or something to eat. And I expect we’ll be able to purify some water by boiling it over a campfire.”

“And what campfire would that be?” Nick enquired.

“The one that I’m going to build, of course.”

“By rubbing two sticks together? I didn’t know you were such a boy scout.”

“Actually…” Stephen rummaged in his rucksack, “…I was planning on using these.” He tossed a box of matches at Nick, who caught them clumsily. “Now, why don’t we see if we can find some firewood?”

*   *   *   *   *

A couple of hours later, with dusk falling and a small fire crackling away merrily, Nick had to admit that maybe Stephen was right. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. A chance to relax would do them good. This was quite a nice place to be stuck in, really.

Except for the bugs. Nick slapped at another mosquito (at least, he assumed they were mosquitoes) as it landed on his arm, half-heartedly wondering in the process whether by killing a few small bugs he was changing the whole course of history. But he doubted it very much, and thus when the next bug alighted he slapped at that one too.

Stephen was sat opposite him, and seemed untroubled by the little blighters. It had always been that way – insects just seemed to prefer the taste of Nick.

“You haven’t got any bug repellent in that rucksack, have you?” Nick complained. It had turned out that Stephen had been carrying an extra bottle of water, three extra cereal bars, and two rather bruised apples in his bag, meaning that they would be able to cope for the three days it took the anomaly to reappear. Just.

“Afraid not,” Stephen replied. “You’re just going to have to be dinner, unfortunately.”

“Great,” Nick grumbled. He looked around, trying to anticipate where the next hungry diner might be coming from. But it was no good – there were insects everywhere. He did spot something else, however. “Hey, look at that.”

“What?”

“Those flowers. They’re night blossoming.”

Stephen looked in the direction Nick was pointing. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Earlier they just looked like buds on a vine, but now they’ve opened. They’re really quite beautiful.”

The flowers _were_ beautiful – a deep purple that was almost black in the flickering light cast by the campfire, with long, trumpet-like blooms that dangled downwards, waving softly in the evening breeze.

Nick looked at Stephen across the campfire. He suddenly felt incredibly lucky to have this time alone with Stephen. They hardly got to hang out together at all any more, what with the anomalies and everything else going on, and Nick was determined to take advantage of this opportunity.

He watched as Stephen stretched out beside the fire, the flames lighting his skin with a golden glow, his posture lazy yet sensual, his blue eyes sparkling in the firelight…

Hold on a second – where had all _that_ come from? Nick shook his head, confused. He didn’t think about Stephen in that way. He shook his head again. He must just be tired, that was all. It had been a stressful day, after all.

Stephen didn’t appear to have noticed anything amiss. He stretched a little, and then settled himself more comfortably beside the fire. “Time to get some shut-eye, I think. We could both do with it, after the day we’ve had.” He patted the ground beside him. “Come on, lie down. We’re probably going to need to share body heat – we don’t know how cold it’ll get around here at night, and the campfire won’t take long to die down.”

Nick hesitated for a second, and then stood up and walked over to Stephen, lying down beside him, scant inches between them.

“Closer than that,” Stephen admonished. “You know that – we have camped out before.”

Nick shuffled a little closer, trying to shake off his discomfort. This was ridiculous. It was just Stephen. Nothing was going to happen.

“Good night, Cutter. Sleep well.”

“’Night, Stephen,” Nick echoed. Although he wasn’t sure how much sleep he was going to get.

*   *   *   *   *

In the morning Nick woke in the unusual position of having a Stephen Hart draped over him. Sometime in the night Stephen had rolled over, plastering himself along Nick’s left side, with his arm thrown over Nick’s chest and his leg laying across Nick’s shins. His warm breath was tickling Nick’s ear and the side of his neck.

Nick lay very still. He wasn’t sure he could extract himself from this without waking Stephen, although if he stayed where he was Stephen was going to find out anyway when he woke up.

He decided to risk it. Breathing shallowly, he made to wriggle sideways, hoping he could just slide out from Stephen’s embrace.

Too late. A stiffening in the arm across his torso told him that Stephen was awake. He turned his head to see Stephen regarding him from a few inches away, his expression confused and rather embarrassed.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nick lied – badly, as they both knew. “It was you who said we should share body heat. It must have got colder than we anticipated last night. Automatic response to the nearest source of warmth, that’s all.” Neither of them bothered to point out that this had never happened before, and they had slept in some pretty cold and uncomfortable places over the years.

“So, are you going to let me get up or not?”

“Oh, yeah, right. Sorry.” Stephen rolled away, his face flaming, and Nick tried not to think about how cold he suddenly felt as he scrambled to his feet.

Looking for something else to focus on, he went over to the rucksack and rummaged in it for longer than was strictly necessary before pulling out a couple of the cereal bars. “Breakfast,” he said shortly, tossing one to Stephen, who conspicuously didn’t look at him as he caught it.

‘Breakfast’ passed quickly and silently, both of them munching on their cereal bars determinedly, Nick tucking the wrappers back in the rucksack to take home. But then, with nothing else to do, there was no help for it.

“So, what should we do today?” Nick asked lightly. It was a moot question, of course. They couldn’t go anywhere, not while there was a chance the anomaly might reappear before its hopefully allotted time slot.

“Here’s a thought – why don’t we sit here and watch that patch of empty air in case a rip in the space-time continuum should suddenly appear in it,” Stephen joked.

And suddenly, just like that, things were okay again. What had happened became just ‘one of those things’. Nick relaxed. “Sounds like fun,” he said dryly.

After chatting for a while they eventually came to the realisation that watching for the anomaly didn’t require _both_ of them. So long as they stayed in earshot, there was no reason why one of them couldn’t explore a little, while the other remained on guard. They hadn’t seen any animal life apart from the mosquitoes, so there was no reason to suppose that they were in danger of being eaten. And it was obvious to Stephen that Nick was desperate to find out a bit more about this environment they’d found themselves stranded in.

A couple of hours later Nick returned to the campsite, his arms full of plant samples. Lacking any specimen bags or other storage, they wouldn’t be able to take them back to their own time, so instead Nick settled down to make sketches of them in a notebook Stephen had produced from his apparently bottomless rucksack. He had even picked one of the night-blooming flowers, but in the daytime it wasn’t nearly so attractive, and after sketching it in its current state, Nick tried to draw it as he recalled it from the night before, although he was ultimately unsatisfied with his efforts – his memory seemed strangely fuzzy, for some reason.

In the afternoon it was Stephen’s turn to explore, while Nick remained at the campsite, continuing his sketches and notes with one eye on the notebook and one on the anomaly site. Stephen went off in the opposite direction to the one Nick had gone in, and returned an hour later, one of the water bottles replenished from a pond he had discovered about 150 yards away through the trees. He was quite proud of his find until Nick pointed out that, despite his claims the previous evening, he wouldn’t be able to purify the water by boiling it, as they had no cooking pots. They were just going to have to ration the water and hope that the anomaly did indeed reappear when it was supposed to. If it didn’t…well, they’d just have to cross that bridge when they came to it.

Night was falling and the flowers were opening again before Stephen stopped being in a grump about _that_ , and exasperatedly took the matches off Nick before he wasted them all in his unsuccessful attempts to light the campfire.

Nick picked another of the deep purple blossoms and attempted to sketch it again. But the light from the flames wasn’t really good enough to draw by, and eventually he had to give up, with yet another page of the notebook littered with aborted images.

Stephen sat down beside him and handed him one of the apples, peering over his shoulder at the notebook. “Not bad,” he commented approvingly.

“They’re not quite right, though,” replied Nick, biting into the apple – his stomach had been rumbling pretty much continuously for the last two hours. “I can’t seem to get it properly accurate.”

“Better than I can do,” said Stephen. “You do remember the reason why I’m never allowed to sketch the finds on digs, right?”

Nick chuckled. Stephen was indeed an atrocious artist. His representations of skeletons looked more like collections of sticks than anything anatomical.

Stephen leaned closer, reaching over into Nick’s lap to flick back a few pages in the notebook. “All the others are really good, though,” he said. “I’m very jealous.”

“Well, it’s a good job they are,” said Nick. “They’re the only record we’ve got at the moment.” He glanced over to where his specimens were now nothing more than a wilting pile of greenery. “We’re going to have to work out if there’ll be time in future for people to come through and collect proper samples.”

“Mmmmmm…” Stephen agreed, sounding distracted.

His breath ghosted across Nick’s cheek, and Nick suddenly became very aware of just how close Stephen was, and even more aware of the fact that his hand was still resting across Nick’s lap. “Stephen…”

Then the hand moved, coming up to cup Nick’s cheek, turning Nick’s face as Stephen leaned in and…

Stephen was kissing him. Tentatively at first, but then more confidently. Hungrily, even. And after a few seconds, Nick realised with a shock that he was kissing Stephen back, just as enthusiastically. It was that which finally made him pull back, jerking his head away in confusion.

“Stephen…what are we doing? We don’t do _this_. We’ve never done _this_.”

Stephen looked at him, his expression as bewildered as Nick felt. And yet his eyes were dark, glinting with lust, and Nick had to force himself to look away before he did something stupid. He got up quickly and started pacing.

“What _is_ going on?”

“I don’t know.” And Stephen’s voice didn’t sound anywhere near as bothered by that as it should have done. Nick turned to see Stephen watching him in a way that sent his thoughts in a direction they really shouldn’t want to go. And damn it if he didn’t want to give in to those thoughts, and go back to Stephen and…

“Stephen! Stop it! Stop looking at me like that!”

Stephen shook his head like a swimmer trying to dislodge water from his ears. “Sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me. Over _us_.”

“Well, until we work it out, I’m staying over here and you’re staying over there,” Nick said firmly. He sat down purposefully on the other side of the campfire to Stephen, looking at the flames, at the flowers, at the ground – anywhere but at the other man.

This was ridiculous. Neither of them had ever thought about the other like this before. So _why_ was it happening now? Unable to come up with an answer, Nick forced himself to sit still despite the tingling in his skin, the itching in his fingers, and the almost unbearable compulsion to go back over to Stephen.

Eventually, he fell asleep.

*   *   *   *   *

Another morning, another awkward awakening. At least this time he didn’t have Stephen sprawled over him. Both of them had remained firmly on their own sides of the campsite – apparently this…whatever it was…didn’t include sleepwalking in an effort to be close to the other person. Thank god.

However, given the events of the previous evening, Stephen didn’t have to be anywhere near him this morning for Nick to feel the full force of his own embarrassment. And, by the looks of things, Stephen wasn’t fairing much better. Each time one of them accidentally caught the other’s eye they both jumped and hastily looked elsewhere.

Breakfast was an even more silent affair than the previous day, and as soon as he had swallowed his last mouthful of cereal bar Stephen jumped up and announced he was going exploring again, setting off into the jungle without waiting for an answer, and leaving Nick alone with his notebook again.

Nick didn’t mind. He couldn’t care less who did the exploring, so long as Stephen and he didn’t have to share the same patch of forest for longer than was absolutely necessary. Every time he thought back to what had happened he felt his cheeks flush. And it had only been a kiss. He dreaded to think what he’d be feeling now if they hadn’t been able to keep a handle on their self-control.

The day passed in isolation and hunger. With only three cereal bars left Nick missed lunch, trying to ignore the insistent growling of his stomach. Stephen reappeared around mid-afternoon, which Nick took as his cue to immediately make himself scarce.

But since he had only a few hours to look around until darkness fell, return to the campsite was inevitable. No matter how embarrassed he might be, he wasn’t stupid enough to stay out in the jungle at night on his own. Just because they hadn’t run across any dangerous creatures yet, didn’t mean they weren’t out here. And they were far more likely to catch him unawares after dark.

Grudgingly, he made his way back to the anomaly site, finding Stephen sitting by the newly made fire, staring into the flames absently. A cereal bar had been left out for him, and Nick ate it slowly, pretending that while he was concentrating on food he didn’t have any attention to spare for anything else.

By the time he finished the night flowers were opening again, and Nick decided he would have another go at drawing one of them. Anything to keep his mind off Stephen.

Unfortunately, Stephen had no such distractions, and as time went on Nick could feel the other man’s gaze becoming more and more fixed on him. Desperately trying to ignore it, he rose to pluck another bloom – the one he had chosen previously being a rather weedy specimen.

But as he was standing in front of one of the more luxuriant of the vines, trying to decide which was the best looking flower, a soft noise and a sudden warmth on his back told him that Stephen was standing right behind him. And before he could move hands settled on his shoulders and Stephen’s lips were nuzzling at his neck.

Nick moaned softly, and tilted his head to give Stephen better access. Somewhere a small voice was telling him that this was a really bad idea, but it was fast being drowned out by the one that was telling him that this felt really good, and that he shouldn’t resist it.

Stephen’s hands slid from his shoulders and settled on his hips, turning him until they were standing nose to nose, and Nick could see that Stephen’s eyes were almost black with lust.

But he didn’t have much time to appreciate the sight, as Stephen was kissing him again, his lips needy and his tongue demanding as he pushed Nick backwards into the vines. The weight of Nick’s body crushed some of the flowers – they gave off a heady scent and spilled bright yellow pollen on to his clothes.

Something clicked.

Nick wrenched his mouth away from Stephen’s. “Stephen! The flowers…it’s the flowers…something about the pollen is…”

“Don’t care,” Stephen gasped. “God, Nick…need you…”

He kissed Nick again, pulling him forward this time. Nick went willingly, the protesting voice now nothing more than a faint memory. Together they sank to the ground next to the flickering golden glow of the campfire.

Thinking stopped.

Soft gasps at lips on skin turned to sharper cries as hands caressed hard flesh. Clothes were discarded, heedless of the cooling night air. Nick moaned long and low as Stephen entered him, his fingers clutching at Stephen’s arms hard enough to bruise. It was slow and sensual, yet desperate and needy at the same time. Nick held Stephen close as they rocked together, and the moment of completion took his breath away.

They fell asleep entwined in each other’s arms.

*   *   *   *   *

“So, it was the flowers then?”

Those were the first words Nick heard as he opened his eyes. He felt at once rested, and incredibly tired, and he was sore in places he had never expected to be sore in. “What?” he said blearily, still trying to accept not being asleep.

“The flowers,” Stephen repeated. “You said something about the pollen?” He was sitting several feet away, fully clothed, looking as if this were nothing more than an interesting scientific discussion. Nick suddenly became very aware of his own nakedness. Stephen had obviously chucked his clothes over him, an attempt to preserve his modesty for which Nick was extremely grateful. But that didn’t change the fact that he was, to all intents and purposes, naked.  He gave Stephen a look, and the other man obliged by turning away while Nick hurriedly threw his jeans and t-shirt back on.

“Yes, I think it was the flowers,” Nick said by way of indicating that it was safe to turn round again. “Something in the pollen must act as a kind of drug – loosening inhibitions, that kind of thing. It explains why we were only affected at night – the flowers are closed during the day.”

“So you’re not feeling anything right now?” Stephen asked. “No desire to kiss me or anything?” He smiled nervously as the joke fell rather flat.

“No,” said Nick. “None at all.” Which wasn’t quite true. When he looked at Stephen he felt a tingle sweep across his skin. Not that he was going to say anything about that – he was probably still feeling the residual effects of the pollen, that was all.

“Well, at least the anomaly should reopen today,” said Stephen. “We won’t have to spend any more nights here. No risk of it happening again.”

And was it Nick’s imagination, or did Stephen sound faintly disappointed? No, that was ridiculous. They really needed to get out of here before anything else crazy happened.

Nick extracted the final cereal bar from the rucksack and broke it in half. “Share?” He proffered one half to Stephen, who took it, chewing a little half-heartedly.

“We’d better get out of here today,” he commented. “We’ve got nothing left to eat.”

“It should only be a few hours until it opens,” Nick replied. “Fancy a last chance to explore?”

“Trying to get rid of me?” Stephen asked lightly.

“Not at all,” said Nick, surprised to find that it was true. He hadn’t expected to even be able to _look_ at Stephen this morning, never mind hold a rational conversation with him.

“Well, in that case I might just stay here, then,” said Stephen. “I’m feeling a bit tired this morning – might take a nap.” He stretched out, using the now mostly empty rucksack as a pillow. “Don’t let me stop you, though.”

But Nick remained where he was too, alternately flicking through his notebook and watching Stephen sleep. Unbidden, the slightly blurred memories of the night before floated to the forefront of his mind, and although he blushed slightly, he found that he didn’t mind them as much as he thought he would.

Several hours later, the anomaly reopened, right on schedule. Nick and Stephen hurriedly collected together their few belongings, and dived back through to find a very worried Claudia, Abby, and Connor waiting for them on the other side.

“Are you alright?” Claudia asked without preamble.

Nick and Stephen exchanged glances. “We’re fine,” they both said.

“If a bit hungry,” Stephen added

“What was it like?” Connor demanded. “What did you see?”

“It was a bit boring really,” Nick said, after thinking for a few seconds. “We couldn’t leave the anomaly site in case it reopened before we were expecting it to, so we didn’t get much of a chance to explore. We didn’t see any creatures – well, except mosquitoes – so nothing tried to eat us. We were reduced to sketching pictures of the local plant life.”

“Can I see?” Connor all but snatched the notebook from Nick’s hands, turning the pages eagerly as Abby peered over his shoulder.

“Some of these look really interesting,” said Abby. “Maybe we should try and collect some samples the next time the anomaly opens.”

“No!” Nick and Stephen all but shouted. The other three looked surprised.

“I mean, the anomaly isn’t open for long enough to make it safe,” Nick explained in a quieter voice. “Stephen and I should never have gone through the other day. It’s too dangerous.”  As if to prove his point, a sucking sound behind them indicated that the anomaly had closed as suddenly as it had appeared.

“Oh well, never mind.” Connor looked slightly disappointed, and handed the notebook back to Nick.

“At least you both made it back safe and sound,” said Claudia. “That’s what matters. Now, we’d better get you back to the Home Office, so you can explain to Lester where you’ve been for the past three days.”

*   *   *   *   *

Later that evening, Nick sprawled on his sofa staring unseeing at the evening news. The television was only on for company, really, rather than anything else. His thoughts were far too preoccupied for him to pay attention to the latest political wranglings in the government, or the fact that a football team he didn’t care about had suffered a shock defeat at the hands of another football team he didn’t care about.

He couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened between him and Stephen. The version of events Lester had received that afternoon had been, by mutual silent agreement, heavily edited by both of them. And they hadn’t told Abby or Connor or Claudia about it either. Which left him with no one to discuss things with. Well, almost no one…

But something kept him from calling Stephen. What if the other man didn’t want to talk about it? Just forget it had ever happened? He wouldn’t thank Nick for raising the subject if that was the case.

It didn’t help that Nick himself couldn’t decide if he just wanted to forget about it. The way it was preying on his thoughts suggested that maybe he didn’t. Or that, at the very least, he needed more closure on the situation than just ignoring it and hoping it went away.

One thing was for certain, however. He wasn’t freaking out about it. And neither had Stephen seemed to be, actually. Which suggested…

The doorbell rang. Nick levered himself to his feet, already knowing who it would be. Thus he was unsurprised when he opened the door and found Stephen on his front step. Wordlessly, he stood aside and let the other man in, following him as he made his way into the living room.

Nick wondered if this was going to be awkward, and tried to think of some way to introduce the subject tactfully. As it turned out, however, he didn’t need to.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Stephen said without preamble.

Nick blinked, nonplussed for a second. Then… “Me either,” he admitted.

“What do you think that means?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Do you think we could be…?” The look of confusion on Stephen’s face was so comical that Nick had to fight not to laugh.

“Well, I don’t think I am,” he said slowly. “And I don’t think you are, either.”

Stephen took a step towards him. “Then why do I want to kiss you right now?” he asked, half bewildered, half challenging.

“Maybe it’s just me, and it’s just you,” Nick answered.

“But we’ve known each other for ten years, and I’ve never wanted to kiss you before!”

“Maybe we just never noticed.” Nick was suddenly surprised to realise that he was trying to justify the situation. Trying to come up with reasons why Stephen _should_ kiss him. And he was even more surprised to discover that it felt right that he should do so.

“Perhaps we’re still just feeling the after-effects of the pollen,” Stephen offered helplessly, with no real conviction behind the words. And, Nick realised, no desire to be right.

Nick shook his head. “I don’t think so. Remember, the effects always wore off by the morning. And it’s been another twelve hours since then. I think we’re in the clear.”

“And yet I still want to kiss you,” Stephen said.

“And yet you still want to kiss me,” Nick agreed. He grinned. “If you want to so much, maybe you should just do it.”

“Maybe I should.”

They both took a step forward this time, bringing them to within inches of each other.

“This is weird,” Stephen said.

“No arguments from me,” Nick replied. “But I’m thinking it’s a good weird.”

“Can’t see anything bad about it myself,” Stephen responded. He looked at Nick for a few seconds.

“Well…?” Nick nudged him with a toe.

“Well what?”

“Are you going to kiss me or not?”

“Demanding little so-and-so, aren’t you?”

“Excuse me, I’m not the one who’s been talking about kissing me for the last five min…”

Stephen kissed him.


End file.
